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Polish records in the 80’s were pressed and released by government-sponsored labels. Most punk records in that era contain "government beeps" that censor their questionable lyrics. It is not uncommon to hear the record geek say, "Yeah I got that record with government beeps" like they were saying "I got that record on green."
Third bird death today. Bad luck, bad van aerodynamics, or dumb birds? Worst load-in ever – Bratislava, Slovakia: park outside, go up half-flight of stairs through electric doors and door frame (which keeps rolling equipment from rolling), go through lobby, get buzzed in through another door (another door frame), go down 50 meter hallway, down a flight of stairs, down another 50 meter hallway, down another flight of stairs, into a small theater (another door frame) and up a few stairs. With my rib in such pain I have to walk and breathe in an awkward, twisted position putting new strains on my back. And because of the rib I have to use my right arm more, but the developing cramps in my back mean I only have about half the strength in my right arm. To close the sticky van door I have to reach inside and slide it closed with my whole body weight channeled through my right arm, being careful not to let it close on my hand. Tonight, however, I was too late. But closing the door wasn’t the funny part, nor was locking the door before it closed. The funny part was trying to use my left arm to get the keys out of my right-hand pants pocket. Through some sort of dance (accompanied by the rhythmic flow of "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck") I was able to free my hand, but not before killing all the nerves in my middle finger. I felt so stupid I didn’t want to tell anyone but the pain and swelling were so bad it was impossible to conceal. Plus, someone saw me and told everybody before I returned to the venue. Hey, if I saw it I’d probably have laughed and told everybody too. As one can imagine, I needed ice. Bad. It might be interesting to note that nowhere in all of Slovakia is there ice. Not even the bar had ice. Just thought you should know, in case maybe you were ever in Slovakia with a damaged appendage and needed some. At 3am we dropped off THE FLAME STILL BURNS’ bass player and girlfriend at their apartment. They asked about all the bottles rolling around the van floor and we told them about the Piss Bomb story. They wanted to see it so when we dropped them off we put one under the driver’s tire. When the couple were on the other side of the 4-lane street we took off. No one saw the car coming from behind until it was too late. He was hit so bad he had to slam on the brakes and eventually use the windshield wipers, but by then we were already down the block and just rounding the corner. We felt terrible even though it was unintentional, but damn, it got a good laugh.
Jack Mind Control told us of their time spent in tonight’s squat. He went to use the bathroom – an Eastern-style hole in the ground. Shit and puke were caked in every available crannie and the entire room sat under ½ an inch of pee. When he pushed back the door a crusty squat dog was feverishly lapping everything up. Jack tried to kick him out of the way but the dog turned his head back and snarled. Getting the point he waited till the dog had cleaned every pissy, shitty, pukey inch of the toilet. When he was done peeing Jack stepped outside and saw a girl French-kissing the dog. Then another crusty started kissing the dog, and then another and so it went… Picking out a gay man in Italy is like finding an M&M in the Skittles jar. All the cheesy stereotypes from the States don’t really apply here. All the Italian guys are always kissing each other and dressing really sharp and touching each other and hanging off each other talking in lispy voices… In fact, the only Italian I’ve met who I know is gay doesn’t fit any of these stereotypes. He is hefty, tough-looking, has a big-ass beard, and is covered face-to-toe in tattoos that read things like FUCK YOU VERY MUCH.
Ho crap, are L’AMICO di MARTUCCI a great band…. Descendents bass lines and two guitar players that don’t even use distortion. SO….TOTALLY….RAD!!! I just took a crap in the parking lot of tonight’s venue. Hey, if this huge dancehall had a toilet I would have used it! And if they had any sort of non-alcoholic beverage I would have drank it. And if they had a dog kennel I would have riled all the crusties’ dogs and put them in it instead of watch them run around and pee on every band’s merch and gang-rape the one female dog. <sigh> Roma
pictures by Valentina:
NERVI are far and away the fastest band with the most thrash riffs yet. Their drummer, Pulci, is a super high-energy skate-rat who admits to liking The Cure and the Smiths. Their singer, Melo, is unique in that only about 3 square inches of his body are not tattooed. He may have FUCK OFF tattooed down his arm and all sorts of squiggly lines on his face and an angry scowl when you ask if he likes the Smiths too, but he is about the sweetest guy in Italy. And their guitar player, Dmitri looks like Jesus. When he and Robert sit in the front seat of the van people must think we’re the Mobile Messiah Machine. On second thought I think maybe BIZZARE X from Germany were the fastest band we’ve seen so far, but they were way more grind than thrash. They were fast like a machine gun while NERVI was fast like nunchucks. The firearm rips you apart in the flash of an eye while the nunchucks, when properly administered, are equally brutal but with a little more groove to ‘em.
If I am looking for a rhyme to a word I customarily take the root word (let’s say it is ‘heart’) and run it through the alphabet (art, bart, cart, dart, etc.) and then I run through the compounds (chart, smart, start, etc.). But I have never thought to use ‘dm’ as a prefix. Dmitri. What a rad name.
Leaving a gas station at four in the morning we stopped in front the neighboring McDonald’s. I placed Piss Bombs under each tire. I was a little apprehensive because I didn’t ant to get any innocent bystanders again so after the first attempt didn’t work I only replaced two of the Bombs. They failed again and by this point we were getting close to other cars and customers so I refused. Robert then took it upon himself to see the attack through. Our third attempt also failed but we drove around to see why and ran over one of the deflated bottles. There was just enough juice to totally saturate some guy’s motorcycle. This really pissed me off (no pun intended) and I swore off Piss Bombs for the rest of the trip. Robert denies it even happened but I still stand firm – no more Piss Bombs.
We’re playing under and overpass tonight. Seven of us used an entire can of OFF bug repellent in under 3 minutes. Most of us aren’t ones for chemicals but sometimes it’s 95 degrees with 90% humidity and you can’t wear pants and long-sleeves and you can’t keep your mouth closed and your hands over your face forever. So sometimes shaving a few days off the end of your life seems worth it. No matter what time it is, someone in Italy is either planning or fixing or eating a meal. Got in from the show at 5am (5rd night in a row) and someone was up making pasta (3rd night in a row). Three hours sleep and off to the garage to help our van run more like a transport vehicle and less like a go-cart. The mechanic had steel-toed sandals, by the way. |
